Photon Torpedo Shielding

A brief analysis of and theory about the strange glow of photon
torpedoes.

1. Torpedo casings have been seen on several occasions as two meters
long, black or grey in color, and demonstrate a distinct lack of glow.
(Star Trek II, Star Trek VI, the first TNG episode with K'ehlyr,
"In Theory"[TNG], Star Trek Generations (solar probes),
"Dark Frontier, Pt. I"[VOY] (when one was transported onto a Borg ship and
detonated), "Living Witness"[VOY], et cetera)

2. Torpedoes, when fired, glow like crazy, whether at warp or impulse.
Different Federation torpedoes have glowed in many different colors, from
yellow (VOY) to red (Star Trek VI), and from blue (ST:TMP) to white
(TOS, and I suppose you could say Quantums, too).

3. There is no logical reason for a torpedo to be made to glow this
way. "Tracing" the torpedo is unnecessary, would make it easier to shoot
down. One could try to say that it is holding on to its impulse drive
products, but why would this be desirable, and how would it work at warp?
It's also not the crazy idea I just came up with, that being that the
torpedo is constantly firing phasers on widebeam around itself. This
would be weird at warp, and though it might help the torpedo penetrate
shields, it would only make sense if the torpedo were firing (and
therefore glowing) in front of itself.

4. On the new series Enterprise, their older
spatial torpedoes do not have a
glow. Of course, they don't have shields, either.

Given the above, it is clear that something else is going on. It
should be readily apparent that photon torpedoes have some sort of
high-energy field surrounding them. But what? It's certainly not anything
designed for low-observability. Besides, energy output like that ought to
make them *easier* to target . . .

So, what's left? Shields.

We know what a ship looks like when it has shield power driven up to
such an extent that the ship is not worried about burning out its own
works (the one-way trip Orion pirate vessel in "Journey to Babel"[TOS]) .
. . it glows like a torpedo.

Orion Pirate Vessel from "Journey to Babel"[TOS]

Further, we know that photon torpedoes can
comfortably enter a star ("Half a Life"[TNG]), or smack into a planet and
dig before detonating ("Pen Pals"[TNG]). It is also the only logical
explanation for how a solid object can be set to the right frequency to
bypass starship shields, as seen in Generations.

Of the possibilities, shields would seem to win out.

Updates

1. The
concept of shielding is confirmed in "Half a
Life"[TNG4], though I didn't recall this when I was first making the page.

Dr. Timicin has spent the last few years of
his life developing a guidance program for Federation photon torpedoes, so
that they can be used to restore the star of Kaelon II. No mention is
made of further modifications to the photon torpedoes, and the
torpedoes look no different than usual. The photon torpedoes that are
fired are capable of reaching the star's core, and Timicin reports that
"their shields are holding". The torpedoes then sit there for over
six seconds waiting to detonate.

Why
is this subject so amusing to me? It was one of the first concepts I
fielded on ASVS, and I can still recall the efforts of some to disprove it with
nothing more than
flame and ridicule.

2. The new series Enterprise has begun showing
"photonic torpedo" use by the Earth Starfleet of the 2150's. Naturally,
these torpedoes give every appearance of being virtually identical to their
later incarnations.

Though
this seems curious given that Enterprise herself has no actual shields, we've
already seen the small-scale application of forcefield technology on the ship,
as hastily rigged up by Lt. Reed in "Vox Sola"[ENT1]. The
conversation went as follows:

Reed: "Starfleet's been working on creating a stable EM barrier for the last five years."
Archer: "A force field?"
Reed: "Right. They just haven't found a way to control the particle density. All the specs are in the database. I've been trying to jury-rig a prototype of my own."
Archer: "And?"
Reed: "I've got it stable enough to absorb a phase pistol blast 60% of the time. I think I can improve on that."

It would seem that he, or someone back on Earth,
did indeed improve on that. Of course, shielding an entire starship is a
much larger affair, but this should mean that Starfleet will have ship shields
in the not-too-distant future. Given the rate of technological
advancement on Enterprise thus far, that means another season or two (and
holodecks the season after that, with replicators appearing shortly thereafter
(sigh)). We'll see what happens.

3. We've seen two burials in space, both of
which made use of photon torpedo casings. The first would be Spock in Star
Trek II:

The second is the casket of John Kelly in "One
Small Step"[VOY6]:

The second event falls right in line
with our expectations. The casket would not be shielded, and thus ought
not glow. The first event, however, does not meet with those
expectations. The only difference between the two events would be the
proximity of (and apparent aiming for) a planet. In Star Trek III, David
Marcus remarks that the gravitational fields were in flux, and thus the casket,
resting on the surface, must've soft-landed.

It would seem, then, that the intent
of the burial torpedo was that it would survive atmospheric entry (supported by
the aerodynamic profile of the torpedo's shield glow, as seen above), and embed
itself some unspecified distance into the surface of the Genesis
planet.

Objection

There is one counter-example I've discovered,
thereby making this a sort of self-objection. In Star Trek II, the
battle in the Mutara Nebula explicitly causes the Enterprise and Reliant to be
unable to raise shields, and yet the torpedoes fired by both ships glowed no
differently than usual. I suppose one could argue that the torpedoes had a
slightly different shielding system, though that would make little sense.
The best explanation to my mind would be that the torpedoes were small enough to
maintain shielding in spite of the nebula's effects.

It is worth noting, however, that a torpedo fired
from the Enterprise while in the nebula shows a very unusual 'sparkly' effect
not seen elsewhere in the film, suggesting that perhaps the shields were
unstable.